


Along the Corridor and Up the Stairs

by TheArchaeologist



Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Aftermath of Earthquakes, Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Angst, Blood, Blood and Gore, Child Death, Dark, Death, Earthquakes, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Feels, Flashbacks, Fluff, Gen, Heavy Angst, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Killing, Murder, Number Five | The Boy Needs A Hug, Number Five | The Boy-centric, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Violence, mentions of child death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-10
Updated: 2019-07-13
Packaged: 2020-04-24 07:20:17
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 5
Words: 14,339
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19168468
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheArchaeologist/pseuds/TheArchaeologist
Summary: The vacation is Allison’s idea. The road trip is Ben’s. Luther hires the eight-seater car. Klaus picks most of their destinations with a pink marker pen. Diego is their designated driver. Vanya reads the map.Five simply tucks himself into the backseat and tags along for the ride. He does not comment on the way the sight of a stupid pen makes his chest tight, or how stuffy the car becomes without the air conditioning. He does not mention the news, and the terrible, painfully familiar images that come with it.There are other things to be concerned about. Things that are far more important than some ridiculous, illogical thoughts. The Hargreeves are going on holiday, and that is a chaos the world is not ready for.He will be fine.





	1. Chapter 1

It was, of course, Allison’s idea.

In the frankest possible terms, the rest of the family are too much of a mess to be coming up with such positivity. Luther is still reeling from the news that Dad sent him away for nothing, Diego is trying and failing to process Patch’s death, Klaus has been tortured, sent to Vietnam, and thrown in the deep end with withdrawal, Ben is dead, and Vanya has a whole host of issues they are steadily working through.

Five just wants coffee and a retirement plan.

The coffee is the priority.

Taking all of this into account, it should therefore come as no surprise that Allison is the one to suggest the vacation. She still cannot see Claire, she explains over breakfast, despite finishing the mandatory therapy sessions, and staying cooped up in the house was neither helping nor healthy.

Five dutifully ignores the glance she sends his way at that, fixing his gaze on the thoughtful faces of his siblings around the kitchen table over the rim of his mug.

No one immediately voices any complaints, all turning it over in their heads with a slowly dawning agreement. Klaus, his feet crossed beside his plate and tipping his chair back in a position that cannot be at all comfortable, looks towards the designated ‘Ben Chair’, his eyes brightening.

“What about a road trip?”

And that is, as they say, that.

The house goes mad over the days that follow, everyone moving about packing suitcases and ordering new clothes and cameras and sunglasses and whatever else you were supposed to get for holidays. Five would not know, he has never been on one before. Dad did not believe in them, calling them a waste of time and resources, and Five had been too focused while at the Commission to take any of the break offers. 

Not that he fully trusted those anyway. While he had never been bothered with their dental agreements, according to the whispers he heard from other Temporal Assassins, taking those breaks docked some of the agreed privileges. It was no wonder Hazel was always complaining.

In the apocalypse, if you take a break, you die, as plain and simple as that. As try as she might, Dolores was never able to convince him.

One afternoon, two days after the vacation proposal was first suggested, Allison corners Five in the library, shoving a brand-new suitcase into his arms along with several bags of clothing and shoes, not so subtly demanding Five to change out of the, “Goddamn uniform, Jesus Five, you look like you’ve escaped from a Catholic school!”

An official ‘Road trip Map’ gets hung up on the corkboard in the kitchen, bright red pins holding it in place, and everyone ends up with a different coloured pen.

Five hates it.

“Circle where you want to go.” Luther says, and it is a testament to his growth that he does not use his authoritative Number One voice. Instead he sounds like Five’s eager younger brother, and once more he is stuck by how young they all are. Luther continues, nodding determinedly, “We’ll do our best to go there.”

Black is his colour because, in Klaus’ words, “Black is practical, and you’re a practical guy.” Which is absolutely true, Five is not denying that fact, but the pen still sits heavily in his pocket, a weight he constantly feels as he goes about his day, invisibly staining him like a gross inky blob. 

It is ridiculous.

Five is a _killer_. He has murdered and tortured and done unimaginable things, yet the mere existence of a _pen_ is enough to make him feel on edge, to bounce his knee whenever he sits down, to chew at the inside of his cheek and gaze off into space while he waits for his siblings to finish their dinner.

It is ridiculous, it is pathetic, and it is uncomfortable.

The pen is one of those thick ended felt types, like the ones he usually goes for if he cannot find chalk and needs to work something out on his walls. It sits noticeably in his hand, an undeniable presence, and there were times in the apocalypse where the world would fall so still, so silent, that Five could spend hours capping and uncapping pens just to hear any kind of noise as he worked. The best were the pens you could click rapidly with your thumb, because he could shift between writing and noise with a single motion.

By the end of the week, there are a multitude of colours looping the map like a bizarre crop circle across the landscape, with highlights including a beach and various museums. It stands proud on the wall, as if glorifying its own marred face, and every time he walks into the kitchen Five is met with an eyeful of spinning blues and oranges and pinks and reds and purples and greens.

No black.

Not a single trace of it.

In fact, Five dumps his pen in some locked backroom of the house, one only he can get into. Without a key, no one in his family will go nosing about in there, and the curiosity will not hold out long enough for any of them to try the vast ring of keys they only recently discovered in Dad’s office. There were enough on there that you could be attempting to unlock the door for a lifetime.

If Dolores was here, she would be scolding him. She always does when he, in her words, “ _Misbehaves_ ,” like this. 

It led to many arguments when they were together, because he would clam up, keep his back to her, ignore her despite the fact that she was the most patient, kind, beautiful person in the whole world and he was _so lucky_ to have her in the apocalypse with him.

“Damn right, you are!” She would laugh, “You could’ve ended up with Johnathan from the menswear section. There is no way you two would have ever got along!”

“Then I’m very pleased to have found _you_.”

Five can almost hear her now, tutting at him and demanding he go get his pen. 

“It’s just a map.” She would say, gentle and understanding, “It’s not _the_ map. There are hundreds of maps in the world, Five, you cannot hide from them all.”

He is not hiding.

Hiding would mean he is trying to not be seen by the map, which is idiotic because a map is an inanimate object. 

Five is _not_ hiding.

He is avoiding.

There is a difference.

Allison, in much the same way she cornered him with clothes, corners him about the map.

“Don’t you want to go?” She asks, and shit, she is using that annoying mothering tone she likes to bring out sometimes, when it has been a long day and she takes Five at face value. “Are you worried about going?”

“Why the fuck would I be worried about going?” Five bites back, perplexed. “That makes no sense.”

“So why haven’t you chosen anywhere?”

He shrugs, stuffing his fisted hands into his pockets so she cannot see how they shake. “Well, seeing as everyone has picked out pretty much everything on there, there wasn’t much point. Also, a black pen? Seriously? It’s too dark, you cover over all the words and roads. If you want to be able to _read_ the stupid thing, it’s probably best I don’t try to double up choices.”

Five made that mistake before, when he first attempted to mark something down. For years it bugged him that he did not know the name of the street because he stupidly made a line right through it. Only decades later, when he came back home, did Five track down a road atlas and finally learn the name. It was as anticlimactic as it was satisfying.

He made a lot of mistakes in those early years, some nearly cost him his life.

Allison, wisely, leaves it at that, seeming to accept his answer. There is a lot of truth in it. Klaus _has_ gone a bit mad with his pink pen, which he has also used to mark a wild number of other things around the house, mourning the loss when it inevitably ran out. There are relatively few sights left to see now, mostly weird ones that no one wants to visit, and Five may be an old man, but he draws the line at the goddamn _pencil museum_.

Seriously, how does that get business?

The subject is only breached again by Vanya when they all climb into the hired eight-seater car that was Luther’s terrible idea. Diego is driving, because Luther could not fit and Allison was needed to keep order in the back, so Vanya takes the passenger seat. In the middle is Allison, Klaus, and, presumably, Ben, and Five and Luther wedge themselves into the far back seats, their suitcases tucked behind them.

Vanya gently unfolds the map, taking in each of the selected sights. 

“The first stop is a museum.” She says as Diego starts the car, and Five can hear the confusion in her voice as she adds, “Five, haven’t you picked anything?”

He keeps his eyes looking out the window as they pull away, watching out of the corner of his vision as Luther’s head swirls to face him, puckered in that frustratingly concerned and contemplative expression he keeps pulling lately.

“Don’t panic, anywhere I wanted to go was already chosen. Didn’t feel the need to double up colours.”

“Yeah, I think you went a bit nuts with the pink there, bro.” Diego pipes up, glancing at Klaus in the rear-view mirror.

Klaus makes an offended noise, and says something in reply, and Five tunes out the noise as the conversation dissolves into light sibling bickering and sass. Tucking his feet up onto the seat so he sits crossed-legged, he lets his head roll back against the head rest, bouncing lightly as they navigate the streets of the city before heading out towards their first destination.

Long travels were, unfortunately, part of life at the Commission.

Time travel was all well and good, but sometimes you were unable to simply zap to your desired destination. While it was preferred to land as close to your target as possible, it is one thing to land in some back alleyway where there were no eyes to spy on you, completely another to drop into the middle of a battle, or political treaty, or important event. Occasionally, you had to start out small, and build up a momentum to reach your target. Getting dubbed an apparition, or a messenger, or _God_ , did little to help your cover.

It only happened to Five once, because while he thought that emerging out of the blue behind a row of houses would be discreet, he managed to wildly underestimate Victorian England and the sheer overpopulation that lined the streets.

That was how he ended up with a gaggle of curious children following him around all morning as he tried to locate his target.

They had been too nervous to approach him, and he was pretty sure he overhead one recite a Bible passage or two to the others, warning them away with bad omens and tales of gloom, so for the most part Five attempted to ignore them. They were, ultimately, harmless, and it was not as if Five needed to be wary of getting his face noticed. The Victorian period is a time without the annoyance of CCTV cameras, and artists interpretations could only do so much, even if he was required to return at a later date.

To some extent it amused him to see the group peering around the corner of alleyways, their eyes round as they ran wild with their imagination. They gained their confidence as the day progressed, inching closer and closer until they were eventually within hearing range. If they caught him watching they would still run away, though, and the eldest of the group did a good job of keeping them a respectable distance.

How they were dressed did not escape Five’s notice.

That part of London was hardly an elitist area, and Five could tell by the way the local water pumps smelt that the death rate would be high. Children were easily susceptible to such things, and he was in no doubt, as he watched one of the girls, a child of barely five, drink from one, that cholera or similar such ailments would take them all.

You only mess with the part of the timeline that concerned you. That is the rule.

Five _had_ to keep his head down, he _had_ to, otherwise the Commission would get suspicious and he would never get home, never stop the apocalypse which would wipe out _billions_ of lives. That _had_ to be his goal, no matter what.

He quietly found his little fan club afterwards, when his job was complete, waiting until they were all looking before he waved and vanished with an electric swirl of blue.

Beside him, Luther has fallen asleep, his head gently tipping as he drifts and swaying in motion with the car. Klaus’ eager words have quietened into a calmer conversation with Allison, and vaguely Five can hear Vanya talking to Diego in the front.

Five has not been with his siblings for a long time, and this trip is going to be hours of travelling. Ultimately, it is only going to be so long before the goodwill switches out for annoyance at being cooped up in a car for hours. 

Journeys are stifling, and already Five can feel the air in the back becoming stuffy and warm. No wonder Luther has succumbed, it is as if they have been locked in a greenhouse on a hot day.

Once, in his first year at the Commission, Five had to take a train from Paris to Châteauroux, the carriages stuffed and the windows barely able to open more than a crack. It was not helped that the clothes he had been given to fit into the time period were stifling, with a tie and a hat and several layers, and the only saving grace was that they fit loose on him. 

The Commission’s clothes were _always_ loose on him, because they constantly overestimated his build, failing to consider what years of malnutrition did to the body.

It was barely surprising that, when he finally, _finally_ , managed to crawl his way back to his siblings, his clothes still, although a bit awkwardly, fit him and his shrunken frame. Even now, in clothes that were tailored to sit well on a child’s body, they hung just a little too empty. Whenever he glanced in the mirror, he always got the impression that he looked like a kid who had recently been sick.

Silently, Five rolls up his sleeves, unbuttoning the top of his polo shirt beneath his sweater and tugging to let some air in.

Diego’s voice cuts through the quiet. “Hey, does anyone want the radio on?”

“I think Luther’s asleep.” Allison calls back.

“Sweet!”

Everyone but Diego startles at the music that blares out of the in-built speaks, loud and obnoxious and making Diego cackle when Luther practically jumps out of his skin.

“Diego!” Vanya chastises.

“Ok, ok!” Their responsible designated driver relents, and the volume gets cranked down to something more acceptable.

Clearing his throat and trying to play down his leap from his skin, Luther blearily blinks, cracking his neck. After a few minutes, a time which sees them stuck at no less than three sets of traffic lights, Five raises an eyebrow as Luther starts tugging at his button-up collar.

“What are you doing?”

“It’s warm back here, right? It’s not just me?”

It is warm. Neither of them can reach the windows from the back, and none of their siblings have opened any. Five cannot hear the gently whirring of air conditioning either, meaning there is little to nothing fresh being circulated around.

He nods mutely, which prompts Luther to request, “Hey, can we have the air on?”

Diego makes a scoffing noise. “You kidding? It’s cool in here. I’m not gonna freeze my balls off for the entire trip.”

“It’s getting hot in the back!” Luther argues, and Five cannot quite tell if it is a normal sibling-getting-annoyed tone or a Number One tone.

“Quit complaining, I’m driving so I make the rules.”

“It _is_ getting hot.” Five agrees, fighting the urge to fidget, “So either put the air on, or I’ll stick a rusty nail in your skull.”

Klaus makes a cooing noise towards Allison. “He’s so sweet when he’s violent.”

“Shut it. Diego, _now_.”

Thankfully, Vanya comes to his rescue, and the distinct whooshing of chilled air starts to spin around them. It prickles Five’s skin, making the hair on his arms stand on end, but Five closes his eyes and relishes in it, letting the cold sink deep into his bones.

“Vanya’s my favourite.” He reports, earning a shocked gasp from someone.

She snickers, and he hears her turn to gloat, “Take that!”

Luther makes a similarly pleased noise at the air, sitting back in his seat, and the small conversations pick back up again.

Five is still in his chilly, refreshing bliss when a voice cuts through the music on the radio, jarring enough to make them all pause to listen.

“ _We are receiving reports of a major earthquake striking Japan less than an hour ago_.” The man relays confidently. “ _Initial reports indicate the earthquake reached a magnitude of seven point two on the Richter scale. It is yet to be known the number of casualties, though it is expected to be in the hundreds. The Japanese Prime Minister has claimed the earthquake as a major incident. We shall have a full report in half an hour._ ”

The music returns, drifting through the car once more, and Five listens as his siblings immediately talk among themselves, their tones sad and sympathetic, their words soft and gentle. Luther leans forward, joining in with Allison and Klaus and Ben, and they remind themselves how lucky they are, and that they cannot be responsible for every disaster that strikes the Earth.

Five sits in the back and stares, unseeing the changing scenery whizzing by outside, the phantom flutters of ash tickling his cheeks.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Oh I do like to be beside the seaside~ Oh I do like to be beside the sea~

Five’s siblings seem to be under the impression he has never been to the beach before.

It is a slightly ridiculous notion. 

In the apocalypse, you never made it anywhere by dallying. If you wanted food, you went and found what you could, and picked off the mold from the rest. If you wanted water, you searched every crevice for pooled rain that you could boil the wiggling bits out of. If you wanted medical supplies, then you walked and hoped and prayed that the local pharmacy you have been raiding for years still has stuff to give, otherwise you are screwed.

The thing is, these hubs ran out.

Five survived in the apocalypse for _forty-five_ years, if he was ever going to stand a chance then he could not simply walk around the same circled area forever. He had to go out, explore and categorise, work out what he could get and where, and how long it would take to reach.

Jot it all down on a map.

Five became very well acquainted with that map.

That stupid, _fucking_ map.

His jaw clenching his teeth painfully, Five stares out across the beach, perched with Luther at the top of the seawall sectioning the sand off from the town. A little way in front of them, Klaus and Diego are both busy in competition in making the biggest sandcastles they can manage, while Allison and Vanya wander off towards the ocean, seeming to enjoy one another’s company and whatever conversation they are having.

A beach is a beach, there is nothing all that spectacular about it. Five does not know who selected it, but if he had to hazard a guess, it was Vanya, going by the way she paused when they first arrived.

The competition between Klaus and Diego is a little strange, mostly on Diego’s part. Five half expected him to snap at Klaus for the suggestion, but instead his brother shrugged, stretched, and said, “Yeah, alright.”

Perhaps Diego was tired at being cooped up in a car for hours and was looking to burn off some extra energy. Perhaps he was trying to humour Klaus so he tires out and will not be awake enough to kick the back of his chair. Perhaps he did genuinely have a childish side, much like Klaus, but it was one he kept hidden most of the time.

Either way, Luther and Five watch from their wall and heckle as and when it is required.

“You sure you don’t want to join the girls?” Luther asks, nudging Five’s shoulder a little. “The tide will be coming in soon, so you’ll need to enjoy the beach while it lasts.”

The last time Five visited the beach, there was an old, rotting whale splattered across it.

Most of the bodies he found were burned, or crispy and blackened at the very least, an indicator that humanity had been wiped out in some great fireball that he could only hazard flimsy guesses as to the origin of. A meteorite strike dinosaur style was his best theory, given what little information he had.

Five was never good with whale identification, or a lot of other animals, really. He is a maths man, physics and complex time theory are his areas of expertise, so all he could say in regards to the whale was that it was exactly that, a _whale_. A blue whale, humpback, sperm, he had no idea, and if it was not a whale then that was one mighty big dolphin.

The rest of the beach had been a mess. Offshore oil rigs obviously did not survive the apocalypse, and thick black ooze stained half the sand while a liquid that smelt a lot like petrol shone iridescent in the water. There had been no life, apart from the cockroaches that scattered among the whale’s fine-hair sheet of teeth, and even the breeze drifting in from out at sea stunk of death. 

If the land had been scorched, then the ocean had been boiled.

The sun drifts out overhead, warm and gentle, making the ocean beyond shimmer. Yesterday, when they visited two marked museums, it was in and out constantly, only just peeking through the white wispy clouds. According to the forecast, from now on it will be hovering over them for the rest of the trip, and the temperature will continue to rise.

Five is relieved he wore his t-shirt today, instead of the long-sleeved one. The thought of being stuffed in that makes his insides liquidise.

“I’m fine here, thanks.” He replies to Luther, and then glances at him out of the corner of his eyes. “Aren’t you hot in that?”

Luther and body image is a mixture of concepts Five never suspected they would be tackling, but then again, he never expected to visit feudal Japan, or to start World War One, or to be with someone for over thirty years who did not care that he was slimy with blood, so who is he to talk?

“Yes.” Is Luther’s surprisingly honest answer. “But I’m not taking my coat off.”

A natural reaction, given that they are out in public, and while the beach is not crowded, there are certainly enough people wandering around to notice Luther’s less than average body.

“You could undo your top buttons,” Five suggests, “That’d let some of the heat out.”

Luther shuffles, wedging his hands under his thighs as he watches Klaus not so subtly kick his foot out to knock half of Diego’s creation, which in turn makes Diego perfectly nail him in the head with a washed-up plastic bottle.

Confused at the lack of acknowledgement, Five fixes Luther with a narrowed gaze, carefully scanning over the embarrassment on his face and then the buttons, and then his covered hands.

He looks between the hands and the buttons.

The hands and the buttons.

Oh.

“The buttons are too small for you.” He realises, and he drops his voice into a lower tone as Luther’s shoulders hunch. “You can’t undo them.”

After a moment, Luther nods. “Most things are too small for me. I can’t…” He clears his throat, and Five waits. “You’re right. I can’t undo them. Or shoelaces. Easily. I mean, I _can_ do shoelaces, but the loops are hard.”

Five shrugs. “All of which is understandable. You’ve lost the dexterity you once had; it’s bound to cause issues.” He glances away, eyeing Allison and Vanya off in the distance, and Klaus and Diego’s nonsense, before offering, “Want me to do it?”

“What?”

“The buttons.” He nods towards them, and then smirks, “Thirteen-year-old fingers are surprisingly small.”

He ignores the slightly awed expression on Luther’s face as he jerkily nods, and leans over, carefully undoing the top buttons. Luther smiles, tugging his collar away from his skin to allow the trapped warmth to leave.

“Thanks.”

“No problem.”

They fall back into their relaxed silence, and over by the sea their sisters turn to slowly start their amble up back the beach. Diego, with far more subtly than his brother, sends a twig into Klaus’ castle, causing the top to crumble in and Klaus to lament. Luther snickers, his dangling feet kicking.

“I wish Dad would have let us do stuff like this as kids.” He sighs, and Five resists tutting at Dad’s mention, letting Luther finish first. “All that stuff he used to make us do as ‘team bonding’, when all we needed was a day at the beach.”

“And let us spend a single day as normal kids? The old man was too stubborn for that.”

“Yes, I suppose he was.” There is something wistful in his voice, and Five lets him stew it over. Nothing will be gained by jumping down Luther’s throat before he can come to the natural conclusions himself.

The wind picks up again, this time strong enough to blow a few things along the beach, sending sand and the scent of the sea raking through Five’s hair.

“Oh.” Luther says, and he leans down to reach onto the pavement behind the seawall. He tilts back up with a newspaper in his hand, the corners dogeared but overall in a surprisingly good condition considering it had been dragged over the floor.

On the front cover, stark against the paper, are pictures from the Japanese earthquake.

Beneath the bold headline of _‘Hundreds Dead, and Still Counting’_ are collapsed buildings, broken telegraph poles, flattened towns. Families huddle together as they gaze up at their ruined homes, and dogs run loose over cracked roads, grey rainclouds darkening the skies overhead.

“Those poor people. I can’t even imagine.” Luther comments, before flicking the paper open to read the full article inside.

The sun emerges from behind the clouds again, tickling heat against Five’s skin, light brushes that flitter with the wind. Inside the paper are even more snapshots from the earthquake, of debris and litter and censored flashes of bodies still scattered among the wood and brick and rubble.

Five brushes his fringe out from his face, briefly sending a puff of air up to his forehead as his body temperature increases under the sun. He swallows, the thick fuzziness in his mouth sliding down his throat, and brings his feet overhanging the seawall up so he is sitting crossed legged.

Their sisters wander over to inspect their brother’s random piles of sand, humming as if impressed yet giving each other knowing side glances. Diego spots this, and stands, brushing himself off and trying to act like he is not embarrassed.

“We should head off.” He calls up to Luther and Five. “I think there’s roadworks between us and the hotel, and I don’t fancy driving around in the dark for hours.”

They parked the car not too far away, within walking distance at some pay and display area that must get packed during the summer months, and by the time they reach it Diego’s plan has worked out completely in his favour.

“I’m beat.” Klaus sighs, stretching as they wait for Diego to unlock the car. “Don’t think it’ll take me long to sleep tonight. Unless someone was murdered in my room, in which case I won’t sleep at all.”

“Same here,” Vanya yawns, covering it with her hand. “Anyone else want to sit in the front? I don’t think I’ll be good company.”

Five shrugs. “I could.”

There is aircon in the front, and windows that can be rolled down, and the heat will not build the same way it does in the back. Diego keeps complaining that it gets freezing with the air on, and with Luther and Vanya in the back it shall still be going.

“Is that legal?” Klaus asks as he climbs in, “Aren’t kids meant to have booster seats if they sit in the front?”

Five kicks him in the shin.

Once they are all comfortably settled, Vanya already drifting off and Klaus leaning back to sleepily chat with Ben and Allison, Diego pulls the car out of the parking space, joining the traffic in the road. The day has slipped into late afternoon, and the sun is slowly starting to sink downwards, angling itself to peek over the roof of the car and into Five’s window.

It is noticeably cooler in the front, and Five can see what Diego means by it being freezing, because this car is an old model and the vents cannot be moved left or right, stuck in their up-down positioning. One blasts full force in Five’s face, and he lets himself enjoy the sensation of goosebumps bouncing across his skin.

“Hey, can you do me a favour?” Diego asks after a few minutes, dragging Five’s attention.

“What?”

“Read the map, would you? I don’t quite know where we’re going.”

“Didn’t you read it earlier?”

“Yeah, but we have a ton of turns to make, and I don’t know when.” He glances over at Five, and then back to the road. “It should be in the glove compartment.”

Clearing his throat, Five finds the map sat on top of Vanya’s closed sunglasses. The already worn paper feels rough under his fingers as he gently pries it open, unfolding like a rotting flower on his lap.

A rainbow of colours glares back at him, a dizzying spiral that loop together, cross over, mix and merge as if he was tipsy. 

“Where…Where are we heading?”

“The, uh, the, um…” Trailing off, Diego glances sheepishly into the rear-view mirror. “Allison, what’s the name of the hotel?”

“ _The Sea View_.” She calls back, sounding as if she has already said as much several times.

“Right.” Five nods, holding the edges of the map with the very tips of his index fingers and thumbs, all the others peel back as far away as possible. “ _The Sea View_. Right.”

Words bundle together, small and fuzzy, bunching up along the tiny roads and streets, smudged by pen marks and cracked in the creases of the folds. Crosses, not the X kind, but the type he has seen used for cemeteries, or places of worship, strike the paper in bold black ink, running with water damage or punctured by ash burned craters.

“Hang on,” Diego says from somewhere, “I’ll see if I can find a street name, work out where we are.”

There are other highlights on the map, pencil, thin-tipped biro, thumb prints from dirty hands that clamber in the corner of his vision, walking up the page.

He is going to be sick.

“Giller Road?” Diego tries, still searching up and down the street as he drives along. “How's that? Can you find it?”

Five gulps. “Um…”

He is going to be sick.

“Wait!” Klaus calls out, his voice still gentle from doziness. “There’s a Butler’s Road there.”

“ _Butler’s_ Road?” Allison snorts, “Seriously?”

He is really, truly, about to be sick.

Five only has mere seconds to register the fact, but as his eyes widen his stomach lurches, jolting as if someone had punched him straight in the gut, and without any thought on the safety or practicalities of such a move, Five blinks straight out of the moving car.

Where he lands, he has no goddamn idea, nor does he have the time to work it out and care, because within moments of landing he is hunched over double, losing whatever he ate for lunch all over the concrete floor.

Distantly behind him, as if he was swimming within some kind of hellish, feverish dream, Five can just make out the sounds of car tires shrieking against tarmac, a horn blaring, doors slamming and footsteps running.

Stumbling to one side, Five leans one hand against the a wall, finally registering the fact that he is in some back alley off the main road, trash and bins matching the filthy decor. His fingers trace the grimy brickwork, and his other hand moves to rest on his knee, still bent over as everything within him gurgles uncomfortably.

He has lost pretty much everything by now, but his shoulders keep hunching as if there is miraculously more. His insides protest the mistreatment, twisting uncomfortably as he tastes ash and smoke and death, warm sea air mutating into rot and decay.

There is shouting on the street behind him, and footsteps enter his alleyway.

“Oh, thank God.” Vanya breathes, and then calls out, “Guys, he’s over here!”

As she approaches, tentatively laying a palm on his back, Five forces himself to croak, “Turns out, I can’t read in a car.”

She huffs a mildly humoured, mostly concerned breath, rubbing up and down his spine. “Well, you can’t win at everything.”

Yeah.

He knows.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's fine.
> 
> He's fine.
> 
> Everything is fine.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A chapter in which Five makes healthy life choices
> 
> (Also tags have been updated, so please take that into consideration)

The hotel has a bar.

How unfortunate. Five would hate to think what that will be like to restock.

That is not his concern, and he takes great pleasure in helping himself to the plentiful supply, letting himself in once the hotel falls quiet, the night-time staff thinning out to a sleepy receptionist and an equally dozy doorman. 

Taking his time to read the selection spread before him, lined up in their glass bottles that never would have survived the apocalypse, Five eventually settles on something vintage and strong, not bothering to fully register _what_ it is in favour of simply removing the cork and chugging back a deep mouthful.

He was right, it _is_ strong.

So, he does it again.

Then again.

Then, he finds himself a second bottle. This one takes several attempts to open, because he does not fully realise at first that it is the type of cork that requires a corkscrew. He finds one, eventually, after knocking over a few expensive looking glasses to the floor, and the liquid is freed to be drunk as desired.

Five does not bother with ice. He has managed to last this long without it, so there is no reason to start now. Ice only acts to distil the drink anyway, and he grew used to the temperature of his beverage being warm long ago, there is little point in wasting time for such a merger thing.

There are no tiny umbrellas, however. 

It is a shame, Five ponders, as he unexpectantly slides down the counter to lay sprawled on the floor, his knees cracking as he does, because Dolores loves tiny umbrellas. 

She would always insist that Five use one whenever they stumbled across a box. It was a pain in the ass, because he was the one who had to lug those things about. Sure, they were light, but at the same time, his wagon needed to be filled with essentials, things to keep him going as he headed off out the city to find new supplies before winter, and hundreds of tiny umbrellas were not high on the priority list.

“You’re taking Vanya’s book.” Dolores would point out.

“Yes.” He would grit. “You know why.”

“Fine. But is the beer necessary?” 

“We don’t know if there will be clean water straight away, I need all the liquid reserves I can get.”

“And in those beers, you need tiny umbrellas.”

“ _Dolores_.”

Blacking out is a strange thing, because as sharp as Five’s mind is, constantly whirring, constantly predicting, altering, challenging, coursing out the best route to take, mapping the next path, he never sees it coming. Dolores told him it is sadly hilarious, because he goes all distant and quiet, and then just keels over like a dead body.

Five would not know, he can never remember.

“It’s as if you have two different states,” She explained once, while he nursed a hangover. “Awake or asleep. There is no in-between. At all.”

“Good to know.” He had grouched back, one arm flung over his eyes to protect them from the constant, stifling sun. “Thank you for your observation.”

Five really did not deserve her.

How she was able to put up with him for forty-five years in the apocalypse, he will never know, or even his first week back in 2019. In a way, Five was _worse_ then, because he kept stuffing her into bags, or left her out of the loop, and she hated it when that happened. She liked being out, being able to see what was going on, relaxing in his wagon, and then his cart, and then on the back of the bike. 

In a way, it is a miracle they lasted so long. She is the exact opposite of Dad, possessing the patience of a saint and an acute understanding of what people needed stemmed from years observation on a shop floor.

Five does not deserve Klaus either, who is the one who finds him at the ungodly time of four in the morning and insists on getting him back to bed.

“Fuck off.” Five groans, waving him away and pressing his cheek against the cool surface of the floor, “I’m fine.”

“Little bro, you are the _definition_ of not fine.”

He giggles. It feels deliciously childish.

After that, Five might be carried, but he cannot fully recall, but if he is then that is surprising, because Klaus is a lanky bastard, and in this body Five is all awkward arms and legs. He is like a daddy-long-legs, if someone plucks off half the legs and the wings.

“What the hell are you talking about, old man?”

Five makes a vague ‘I dunno’ noise, and then conks out completely.

He wakes in a bed.

“Welcome to the land of the living.” Diego greets, laid flat on the other bed in the room. The TV plays mutely on the wall, relaying silent footage of the Japanese earthquake, headlines rolling across the bottom. “Want to tell me why we nearly got kicked out the hotel and charged extra because one of us trashed the bar last night?” 

“Not particularly.” Five breathes, hissing at the heavy wave of ache that washes through his head, beating behind his eyes. 

Groaning, Five curls up on his side, grabbing the pillow from under his head and stuffing it over his face to block out the hot sun blazing through the window and the ghosts stalking across the TV, grey, finely ground powder smudged across their faces.

His stomach churns. 

“Shit…”

“Y’know, I’m an early riser on the best of days, but being woken by Klaus dragging your scrawny ass into the room? That, I don’t appreciate.”

“Delightful.”

“You even listening?”

Five does not humour him with an answer, and after a moment there is a shuffling noise, and Diego steps across the small space between their beds to perch on the edge of his, the mattress dipping. There is a familiar _ting-flick_ of a knife being tossed up and down, a nervous childhood habit Diego has never broken, and one that betrays his believed hidden worries.

“Want to talk about it?”

“There’s nothing to talk about, Number Two.”

“So why are you drinking yourself into an early grave? Shits and giggles?”

Dolores would look at him, those mornings after the bad nights, and ask, “Five, you would tell me if you didn’t want to be here anymore, wouldn’t you?” 

She would sound so soft and frightened, and he could never lie to her, he never _would._

Diego is not that. Diego is hard edges and poking knives, a stupid sense of masculinity wrapped around an equally stupid sensitive centre. He is direct words, and indirect affection, and could cut you down just as easily as he builds you up.

“I’m fine.” Five spits, and the sun it is burning against his leg. He cannot see the screen in his dark cocoon, but it is there, he _knows_ it is on, and it makes his skin itch. “How long until we leave?”

Sighing, Diego backs off. “Half an hour.”

“Great.”

Five is ready in twenty.

Klaus is ready in forty-five, because apparently there was no other option than to use all the different bottles in the room, which meant he had to shower, and wash his hair, and then style it.

After exactly two minutes of waiting, returned to the backseat with Luther and the doors flung open as they sit in the hotel carpark, Five steals Allison’s sunglasses.

“Hey!”

“Deal with it.”

“If we get mobbed by paparazzi, it’s your fault.”

“Cool, I can blink out.” 

“You’re such a brat.”

No, he is an old man. A brat would mean he _feels_ entitled, being an old man means he _is._

Klaus arrives with a waft of sickening mango, yammering out his apologies as they set off for the next destination. It is quite a way away, according to Vanya in the front, at least a two-day drive, if not more with added accommodation time.

Diego flicks on the radio, saying it is mainly for the traffic reports, and music wafts through the car. Klaus twists in his seat to chat with Luther, because apparently Ben has questions about the moon, and Allison leans forward to work out which hotel they should aim for to bed overnight with Vanya and Diego.

Five crosses his arms and leans back, his eyes falling shut behind the dimmed shadows of the sunglasses. He took some painkillers with the toast Diego forced down his throat, but his head continues to complain as if he spent the night with his ear pressed against a pneumatic drill.

Through the windows, sun gleams through, the aircon only working at lessening the blow of the rays that tickle his arms. 

A news report cuts in through the music.

“ _Latest figures show that the death toll for the earthquake that struck Japan at the beginning of the week has now reached over two hundred_.” The woman reels off calmly. “ _Although authorities have been working around the clock, many of the dead remain buried beneath the rubble lining the streets, and many more are still missing. There have been concerns raised on public health if the deceased are not found quickly. In a press conference, the Japanese Prime Minister asked for patience, and praised the work of the rescue teams, many of whom are volunteers_.”

Working at the Commission had been a gruesome, terrible job.

There were assignments that made your stomach turn, that haunted you with phantom images every time you closed your eyes, or left you sat awake well into the early hours, not necessarily to cry, but to lay there, contemplating, a thousand thoughts winging out your brain.

Five is a killer. He will never be able to escape that. He is not like his siblings, who can blame the faults of childhood naivety on their actions, of being brought up by a man who did not see the idea of thirteen-year-olds murdering while they played out being heroes as an issue. 

Even now, when Diego takes out creeps in the night, or when Klaus aimed and fired in Vietnam, it was with a gloried sense of ‘greater good’, of taking out a dangerous enemy and protecting those on your side of the conflict. 

Five is not like that, like them.

Five was precise, deliberate, targeted with his killings. He was orders from higher ups in their decorated offices, a hound to be pointed in a direction and unleashed, snarling and salivating. There is not ‘bad guy’ blood on his hands, just the crimson of people, of grandmothers who took a right turn instead of left, of brothers who did not sign up for the war, of children who stumbled across secrets they should not know. 

People, human beings, normal folk just trying to live out their lives, snuffed by the sound of a dropping tube and a man so desperate to stop the end of the world, he was willing to kill after the population to do it.

But, no matter how horrific, how nauseating, or how many times Five had to stand back and remind himself that the ends justify the means, nothing compared to the apocalypse.

The debris, the mortar, the dust and the ash, the bodies he would find in the most random of places, frozen in that moment of normality by being charred to death. 

Five _hated_ searching the schools, _loathed_ it, because schools were huge centres with vast numbers of supplies. Pens, paper, books, tables and chairs, toilet paper, canned food, bottled water, sports bats and timber and so many other things he could use, but also kids.

Back then, Five did not know the cause of the end of the world, only his theories.

He is not a praying man. God has shoved the middle finger in his face too many times for him to be anywhere near religious, but during those days, when he could not even bring himself to drag Dolores towards the horrors he would find, Five would pray that the destruction of Earth had been quick.

Fuck, he hopes it was quick.

“Is he asleep?” Klaus whispers, and Five does not move.

“I think so.” Luther whispers back.

Allison’s seat creaks. “Did you find out what was wrong?”

“Nope. Stubborn prick wouldn’t say a thing.” Diego grouches from the front.

“Ben thinks we should be worried.” Klaus is obviously twisting back and forth, going by the way his voice changes volume. “And he doesn’t buy the ‘reading in the car makes me carsick’ bullshit.”

“I mean,” Vanya sighs, sounding contemplative, “He is, technically, an adult, we can’t control what he does.”

Five does not need to be looking at Diego to know he is shaking his head as he responds with, “Doesn’t matter. His mind is adult, sure, but his _body_ isn’t. Anyone got any idea what intense alcohol consumption does to a kid?”

“Yeah?” Allison counters, “Do _you_ want to be the one to ban him from drinking?”

“ _Yes_.”

Moments later there is a yelp as Allison hits the back of Diego’s head.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Five: Ice in drinks is pointless and I don’t get it
> 
> Also Five: TINY. UMBRELLAS.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A chapter where a minor drives a car full of grown adults

Five is, unfortunately for him, awake.

Not only is he awake, but he is wide awake, the type of wakefulness where it is as if every sense, every fiber of his body has been turned up onto high alert, picking up on each minute detail both inside the car and out.

He often gets like this after nightmares, and it seemed now is no exception.

Only, unlike the all other times, Five is trapped in the car.

In the apocalypse, he had Dolores, and when her kind words did nothing to sooth his jumping thoughts, he would complete one of his set tasks for the day. Collecting firewood was the chore he often chose, because it let him switch his brain off, let his body work on autopilot as he snuffed out the excess energy that left him tapping toes and wringing his hands with an unknown feeling of _something_.

Five was never able to define the _something_ , a fact that still irks him deeply in a way he is not used to.

The nightmares did not stop after he left the apocalypse. At the Commission, they went tenfold, because not only did his brain now have new material, it kept _getting_ new material. New fears, anxieties, paranoia that left him pacing like a caged beast patrolling the parameters of a too-small enclosure.

The apocalypse was terrible, and any good bits are few and far between. Dolores was one of them, and the constant travelling was another.

The thing is, you get used to always being on the move, always walking from base to wherever he needed to go and then back again. It tired him, wore him out, left Five with a feeling of exhaustion that he could sink every night into with the hopes that maybe it would be deep enough to keep him there.

When he joined the Commission, there was considerably less walking.

Then even less when he finally arrived home.

So, Five paces. He does his ten thousand steps a day and then some. He wears down tracks in the carpet and leaves wooden floorboards with a trailing scuff mark. 

It barely helps.

Everyone else is now asleep, and have been for a while, their heads lolling with the movement of the car, or propped up on cushions. It has grown late, though what the time exactly is Five does not know, and only he and Diego are awake to watch the roads roll by, the streetlights periodically flashing the interior with their amber hues.

Against the floor of the car, his foot bounces, his toes jerking his knee up-down, up-down, up-down, over and over, a constant, uncomfortable buzz he cannot break. It is _grating_ , as if a key has locked into his back and is slowly winding, coiling him up, increasing the pressure but refusing to _let go_. 

His skin is fizzing, irritated with a thousand phantom touches. Even through the material of the sweater he has pulled on, one which he is now realising is not the blue one Allison brought him and does in fact belong to Diego, he can feel it. Flutters breeze passed, holding barely the weight of a breath, light enough that his skin cannot completely detect each flake yet somehow does anyway.

Ghosts of the ash that once fell.

The goddamn ash. 

The _fucking ash._

Five keeps blinking, batting away unseen specks in his vision and rubbing his arms to calm his skin. In the last few minutes alone, Five has been forced to unclench his jaw in fear of cracking his teeth in two at least thrice, if not more.

Everyone else is curled up in their seats, oblivious to the dark roads Diego takes them down, oblivious to the shadowed scenery flying by, oblivious to the choking heat that has engulfed the car ever since the sun set and it was decided that the temperature had dropped low enough to not need the aircon on anymore.

There is no air in the back, nothing fresh and breathable, and the tangs of car fumes merge with soot and smoke.

Both legs start bouncing.

Five needs to do something.

He does not have a clue what, but he must break out of this soon. It is too hot in the back, and there is too much phantom ash, and his mind is moving _too fucking fast_ for him to rein in. Five needs math, or Dolores, or a mission, or _anything_ to bring him back. He is floating far too high, and if he keeps going, he will not see the ground again.

He needs to do something now.

Diego yawning is just the excuse he needs.

“You alright?” Five calls softly, leaning forward to stick his head over the middle seat between Klaus and Allison. He is probably going straight through Ben, but there is not much to be done about that.

“I thought you were asleep.” Trying to stifle another yawn, Diego glances into the rear-view mirror.

“No, and you didn’t answer my question.”

Diego sighs, and has one elbow resting against the closed window, his head leant on his hand. “I think we’ll need to stop for coffee soon.”

“You getting tired?”

Yet another yawn is answer enough, but Diego still adds a dreary, “Yeah.”

“Want me to drive?””

Wordplay is nothing new.

Their father did it constantly throughout their childhood, nudging them into directions they would not choose otherwise, belittling them without a direct hit. It was all part and parcel in the Hargreeves household of traumatic shit they had to live with.

One of the many reasons Dad resented him so much was because Five twigged it early on and wormed his way around the controlling methods without outrightly refusing his demands.

Apart from the day he ran away.

That was the one time he completely ignored a command.

He shoves that thought out of his head, he does not have the patience to contemplate it now.

The fact is, word manipulation is Five’s forte. He went rounds with The Handler, he knows how to twist people into thinking what he needs, to bend them to his unperceived will and sweeten them with honey.

Diego is tired. He has been driving them all day, and they still have a long way to go. Any built up will is crumbling, tumbling away under Five apparently sound logic, his innocent probing and carefully chosen questions.

It does not take long for Diego to break.

Five jumps into the front, while his brother clumsily clambers into the back, nearly kicking Allison in the process. The seat takes several attempts to roll to the right distance away from the wheel, and then several more to find the correct height, but after that they are off.

His body sings with pleasure, fully settling into the task with an eager vigour as energy continues to twist beneath his skin like Ben’s creatures.

The map sits propped on the dashboard, giving him a full view as to where to go and what roads to turn into. Their next destination is a zoo, circled in bright blue thick-tipped pen, and the nearest hotel has been absently marked with a pencil for Diego, and now Five, to aim for.

There had been pencil on his map, as well.

Dolores was the one who spotted it, sticking out of the rubble. It had been blunt at the end, unsurprising considering half a building had come down on top of it, but Five had the knives he carefully removed from Diego’s body, and was able to slowly sharpen it into something of use.

Pencil was used for areas with lots of wood resources.

Pencils are made of wood, so pencils mean wood. This was the logic Five used, much to Dolores’ amusement. He ignored her gentle jabs, because getting wood meant having a fire, and knowing where to go to restock was important, especially when the weather turned cold and white.

Other pens soon came about, and with them a key that lined to edges of the map, placed there in the fear that one day, when he was an old man and still scrounging about the end of the world, Five would lose him mind.

He did not know what would happen if dementia caught him in the apocalypse, and the thought terrified him.

Blue biros had an obvious purpose, that being water. However, there were two types in the apocalypse, and therefore two types of blue. The darker biro, one with a rounded end that had been chewed by the previous owner, was for drinkable. Not that there was a lot of that, but when it rained it was good to know which spots would collect the most and keep it clean. The second was a lighter blue with blotchy ink that would splatter if he was not careful, and this marked undrinkable.

It was easy to get turned around if he did not concentrate, and after so long one pile of rubble looked exactly like the next. The last thing Five needed was to accidentally poison himself.

After the biros came the green, one that he could click open and closed. It was part of a four-way pen which could switch between blue, red, black, and green, but the blue and black were dead before he even found it and the red died in a spluttery line on the first try.

Green meant food, or as close to food as he could get. Sometimes it indicated to warehouses, restaurants, or shops with large quantities of canned goods. Sometimes it meant cockroach nests, or, in the latter years, when actual _life_ began to crawl its way back into being, places he could hunt and trap prey.

Blue and green, the two most important colours on Five’s map.

Below that was red. 

Bizarrely, the red felt tip pen was the scented kind, which completely threw him when he first picked it up. Five was certain it was strawberry, but Dolores always argued for cherry, and he trusted her judgement over his, so simply shrugged and accepted that. Either way, he used it to mark all the pharmacies he found, all the hospitals and schools with a nurse’s office, any place with medical supplies.

Red for blood. Red for gore. Red to remind Five that it was just him and Dolores out here, and if he messed up, he had only himself to save his life.

There were a couple of occasions where Five really, _really_ hated red.

Orange was selected to mark the dangers areas because it was bright, a stark, dazzling snap of colour that made it very clear where Five could and could not go. It could mean a huge range of things, from unstable buildings and roads where the sewage pipes below had collapsed inwards, to areas that seemed to seethe with toxicity, where plants would not grow, and even the cockroaches were tentative to enter.

The pink pen was found on a fluke during a trip for water. 

Summers in the apocalypse could become unbearably hot, seeming to melt him very skin off his bones and leaving Five dizzy, lightheaded, dehydrated to the point of collapse.

This was one such occasion, Five waking to bugs biting his skin and a burn that he knew was going to cause him all kinds of pain for days afterwards. His head had pounded, and when he moved, something rolled out from under him. 

He chuckled, panting and exhausted, “Don’t have a pink one yet.”

Pink became the symbol for clothes, places where he could find things for the changing seasons, or for the periodic growth spurts he would sometimes have during rare bouts of good nutrition, leaving the bottoms of his trousers hanging above his ankles. Pink was for clothes, because unlike water being blue or health red or food as green as salad, Five for the life of him could not think of a single goddamn thing for pink symbolise.

“What about nice spots for us?” Dolores suggested. “Places where we can sit and talk.”

“That’s a lovely idea, but there’s no nice spots for miles around here.”

A waxy, half-melted crayon was the unexpected colour for tools and equipment, because Five had found several hardware stores filled with hammers and nails and screwdrivers and string, and he had been desperate to mark them before he forgot where they were. Purple was not necessarily the colour he would have _liked_ to mar with map with, the same with pink, but you learnt not to be picky in the apocalypse.

“It gives it personality.” Dolores said. “Stop being so practical.”

As the years went on, and Five grew out his beard and his hair, and he and Dolores became close and old, another colour was added to the mix.

Grey was for ash, and rubble, and for Five and his map, grey was for the areas he had exhausted, where there was nothing left apart from the dull destruction of humanity. 

Living for forty-five years in the same area has that effect. No matter how hard he rationed, how little he ate or drank, and often he tried to keep his clothes going for just a bit longer, eventually the pharmacy supplied it last antibiotics, the shop its food, the store its materials, and Five was forced to venture further, search harder, for the things he needed to survive.

Grey started to smear his map more and more, building like dirt in a crack in the road, and by the time The Handler arrived the immediate area was a sea of the same bland, mortar colour.

Then, there was the black.

Five’s grip on the steering wheel tightens, and his body drives them forward on autopilot. Headlights of cars coming the other way hit against his face, creating a strange rhythm of light and dark that dazzle his eyes. After a beat, Five drops down the sun shade. His fingertips feel numb, and his body hot. He flicks on the aircon.

It was the colour that was there from the very beginning, from those early days of confusion and terror and pitiful, painful _hope_ that he could still get back, could still get home to his siblings, to Mom’s cooking and the sounds of violin tricking through the corridors.

Black was permanent.

Black was unmistakable.

Black was for his family.

It showed him where he buried the bodies, little Christian crosses lined up perfectly on the paper with shakily drawn dashes, because despite never being religious in his life, X-marks-the-spot seemed too playful, and simple dots impersonal. He could have tried to conjure his own symbols, but by that point his hands had been bloody, burns had seared their way across his skin, and Five wanted nothing more than to curl up in a corner and sleep for a week straight. So, he went with his gut, copying what he had once seen on a map many months before. 

Crosses for a cemetery, crosses for death, crosses for where his brothers and sister lay buried beneath useless piles of debris.

This was Five’s map. 

The thing he carried with him everywhere, that took him far and wide across the landscape, that lead him out the city and back into it. The map, and its stupid mess of colours, the dribbles of pink from when it he was caught out in the rain, and the ash holes where burning flecks landed to scar the material.

It was, essentially, a map of Five’s life in the apocalypse.

He _hated_ it.

The map was useful, it was practical, it helped him in sticky situations, but he hated it.

_This_ was Five’s worth, the sum of his life, little scavenged coloured drawn across a map like a child on a treasure hunt, only there were no chocolate coins or hidden eggs to be found at the end. There had only ever been disappointment, or destruction, or death.

The cold breeze from the aircon soothes his skin, but deep within Five’s mind he can barely feel it. He does not feel anything at all, because despite giving himself a task, despite doing something that is keeping his hands and feet busy, he continues to float, continues to drift away like a helium balloon a child released by mistake, unable to catch it again.

They stop at a red light.

Blinking dazed eyes, Five turns his head to glance out his window, gaze drawing towards the multiple playing TV screens in a dark shop window.

“Oh.”

The apocalypse mutely dances across them, only it is not the apocalypse, because people are talking, moving, _alive_ , hugging their breathing loved ones and counting their blessings that they survived the ordeal.

The light changes to green. They do not move.

The roads are completely empty now, lost in the throes of sleep, and for minutes and minutes and minutes they just sit there, the engine chugging.

Without thinking, Five jumps, landing in the glow of the window. The night’s chill flickers cool on his skin, soothing the invisible burns, and, completely silently, Five stares.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This boy is so unbelievably fine right now.


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Anyone fancy ice cream?

It is cold.

Cold and dark and numb.

Five likes it.

The ice is like a salve, soothing over the tightness of his muscles, chasing out any trace of the heat that crackles his skin and sets it ablaze with red. The air is crisp, clean, untouched by ash and dust. It tickles the inside of his nostrils, an odd sensation drifting down his throat and into his lungs. Without the door open to trigger them, the lights remain off, making the world black in the windowless room. 

His cheeks sting, and Five wipes at them, prying out the hot moisture from his eyes.

The flashback had been borderline ridiculous.

Why his brain decided now was the perfect time to send him trotting smack-bang into the middle of the apocalypse, he has no idea. Five has been forced to see the images of the earthquake for days now, mortar and rubble being shoved in his face like an overenthusiastic toddler trying to offer food. He has watched the news bulletins, the fake sympathy from reporters as they shove their microphones in the direction of the latest drama, and Five has even been made listen to it, the radio of the car chattering interviews with survivors, pleads to help find missing people, sounds of wailing and despair. 

The morning started off normal.

Yesterday they had been busy, visiting a museum that had been marked down with a green pen, Five forgets who that is meant to symbolise, and then parading through the gift shop at the end. They had spent at least half an hour in there, and by the time they got back to the car more than one Hargreeve was complaining of sore feet and aching legs.

Vanya brought a pencil, if Five is remembering correctly. Diego bought a postcard to send to Mom, which they all signed. Allison got a bear for Claire. Klaus brought a book for Luther, because Luther looked at it but put it back on the shelf, and the big oaf did not seem to realise that it was perfectly reasonable to buy something if he liked it. The expression on his face when Klaus presented it to him was almost as amusing as it was heart-breaking.

After the museum they set out on their long journey towards the next leg of the trip, arriving at their hotel a little passed two in the morning, dragging themselves to their respective rooms like zombies.

This morning it was decided they would have breakfast in the hotel, because they were all still too tired to be bothered to trapes across town to find a decent diner. It must have been an amusing sight for the rest of the guests, because one by one each sibling appeared at the continental buffet table like sleep-deprived teenagers, Klaus still wearing his slippers.

Diego and Five slept in the longest, having been the two who drove through the night (much to Allison’s horror), and both emerge still fairly groggy at the table their family has decided to hijack for the morning. 

Diego gets toast shoved under his nose, courtesy of Klaus, and Vanya slides coffee and a plate of fruit in Five’s direction.

He smiles his thanks at her and selects a grape to chew on.

The map has been brought from the car, and Luther, Allison, and Diego huddle around it as they try and get the next leg of their trip organised. Words get tossed around, discussions on beds and zoos and motels swirling into a mix of organisation, and Five tunes it out in favour of his coffee and a slice of apple.

Through the glass doors leaning onto a small patio owned by the hotel, the sun gleams through, hot and stuffy with the windows all firmly closed, sealed shut to avoid even the slightest hint of fresh air from drifting inside. The light stretches, just brushing against Five’s ankle, and he twists his foot away so it does not touch him.

Everything had been so normal.

Vanya struck up conversation with Klaus, revolving around the tiny shampoo bottles they found in the bathrooms that had a strange scent that none of them could quite place. In Five’s opinion, it is something along the lines of mowed grass, though according to Luther it is autumn leaves. They all disagreed with Klaus’ claim it is vanilla.

Allison reached into her handbag and brought out a small handful of brochures, each for some swanky hotel, and offered them towards Diego, who whistled and made a comment about money.

It was simply another mundane morning.

Then it was slapped out from under Five before he could so much as blink.

Across the room, tucked to one side but with the doors open, is the kitchen to the hotel. Waiters and waitresses had been hurrying in and out all morning, bring more food for the buffet as people came and went, or fetching hot drinks as they were requested.

It is not the staff which startles Five.

It is the smell.

Out of anything, literally anything that could have dragged Five back to the literal end of the world, to the place where he could scream for hours at the top of his lungs and nothing would become of it, what gets to Five is the smell of burning meat.

Not the images that remind him so much of the apocalypse. Not the photos of bodies strewn across the ground in the dust. Not the rising temperatures outside or the sight of black marker on a map. It is not a single one of these things, because those were to be expected. Five had been braced for them, and therefore was never taken by complete surprise when confronted with their presence.

The thing that catches him looking the other way is the thing he never thought he would ever have to experience again.

The stink of burning flesh.

Everyone in the room notices it, pausing their morning chatter to turn and gaze absently at the kitchen doors, where voices are raised, and staff are quickly scurrying towards. The smell wafts around them, making Allison scrunch her nose and Diego tut like a disapproving helicopter parent when their child fails to remember their five times tables.

Five simply stares towards the doors, breathing deeply.

Klaus hums. “Uh-oh, trouble in the servant’s quarters.” 

“What is that, bacon?” Luther asks.

“Sausage, I think.” Diego frowns, his face a picture of distaste. “Jesus, it’s a miracle they haven’t set the fire alarms off yet.”

Allison taps the wood of the table twice with painted nails. “Don’t jinx it.”

“Five?” Vanya says, through the noise. “Are you ok?”

There are bodies burning.

Five has just arrived in the apocalypse, and bodies are burning.

“Hey, Five?”

Fire crackles, snapping in the otherwise silent air, sending great plumes of smoke into the grey and cloudy sky. The wind, pungent with the scents of death and decay, brushes ash against his face, each flake scratching at his skin with course heat. 

Rubble tumbles and crumbles from piles, collapsing buildings, stacks of walls that will only remain standing for a few more hours before finally succumbing to gravity and collapsing in a loud, heavy heap. With it, these walls will take away supplies, materials Five does not yet know he needs, opportunities and resources that one day he shall mourn the loss of.

At the moment, Five is too naive to realise. He has been in the apocalypse for barely an hour and lacks to the knowledge or experience which would tell him to start hurriedly collecting what he can, to store it away where he can make it last. This is the freshest anything he consumes will ever be, and the shock and horror numbs him to this fact.

The bugs are rife. Unlike Five, they understand the bounty for what it is, and make use of the flesh that has yet to be charred. They scuttle, ploughing their way through the cracks and crevices to locate their next meal and hiding spots. Some fly, thick crispy shells peeling back to reveal large humming wings, and as Five stumbles blindly through the end of the world they buzz in his ears. The back of his hand hits one, and the impact makes a dull little thudding noise as the insect bumps into brick.

“Five!”

“Easy, shorty, easy.”

Five is on the floor, something he does not remember happening, his chair sprawled beside him. The room is hot, stuffy, and with a jolt Five realises he is not only on the floor, but is laid out in the glass door sunspot, his skin reddening under the intensity of the glare. 

“Five, hey, you with me?”

People are staring at him. Dead eyes gaze at nothing and everything, and everywhere he turns Five finds himself under the scrutiny of death’s watch. For weeks, as Five scavengers like a mongrel on the streets, he cannot move anything without disturbing a final resting place, without silently reaching hands tipping his way and mouths open with nothing screams.

Three brothers, one sister. That was all he found of out his family of six.

Five spent weeks trying to locate Vanya and Ben. In a way, he eventually did, stumbling across them on the dirty photograph on the back cover of Vanya’s book and in the words of rain splattered pages.

“Five, can you feel me breathing? Try and copy me, ok?”

Hands grasp at his shoulders, squeezing him with concern and love, not at all caring about the burning corpses littered around, sprayed across rubble like seaweed on rocks. Another takes his knee, a thumb rubbing at his skin.

“He’s not hearing us.”

“What should we do?”

“The hell you all looking at! Can’t you give us some goddamn room!”

Without thinking, Five jumps away.

He jumps, because it is too hot, too intense, his skin is going to burn raw if he remains in the heat for much longer, and he never finds any sunscreen in the apocalypse, no matter how hard he tries. Because insects are crawling in his ears, their legs tickling against his face to mix with the brushstrokes of ash billowing into his eyes. Because bodies are cooking, and the smell is raking down the back of his throat, suffocating him like a thick fog.

Just like always, Five runs away.

“Calm down.” Dolores says in his mind. “Try to stop and think for a moment.”

Maybe it was luck, or perhaps some unconscious thought that Five is not aware of at the time dictating his thoughts, but this jump is how he ends up in the freezer of the hotel.

Without a watch he has no idea how long he has been sat here, tucked up between the shelves and shivering, but at the moment Five cannot bring himself to care. His siblings are grown adults, even if they act childish at times, they can look after themselves while Five tries to collect what is left of his mind.

There is a strange taste in his mouth, one that, upon reflection, Five realises tastes of shame and regret. He has not encountered it for a while, not since being back and saving the planet, but with The Commission it was a common flavour on his tongue. On the bad runs, the weeks where he was forced to work back-to-back targets and was in a different place and time practically nightly, no amount of toothpaste could smother the lingering twangs of copper that hovered in the air, nor crackly radio drown out the sounds of dying breathes.

His hands fisting on the material of his trousers, Five forces his eyes shut in the pitch black room, his forehead scrunching as he forces his mind to focus on the cold. Tilting back, he presses his back into the solid force of the wall, the sheet for pure icy tiles making his spine tickle, his hair feel strange against the back of his head.

Deep within him, as far down as the very marrow of his bones, Five aches. Exhaustion runs deep, not the type that comes with long runs or mountainous treks, but the type you feel when you have been crying for a long period of time. The type that arrives after the choking hiccups and spluttered words, that leaves the body feeling drained of all liquid and as weak as a kitten barely minutes into the world.

As if this sensation was non-existent, Five’s brain chatters, reeling off calculations and probabilities, peppering them with glimpses of apocalyptic landscapes and earthquake aftermaths. His brain teases him, reminding Five of all the scenarios where he felt alone, scared, lost, a little boy in a situation no child should ever find themselves.

He misses Dolores.

When the door to the freezer opens, Five does not jump, he barely even blinks. He simply remains sitting, ignoring the sharp light that slices through his icy cave and the soft footsteps that approach him slowly. 

Klaus plonks down next to him and makes a waving motion that obviously means for Ben to give them some space, even if their deceased brother was the one who found him in the first place. Briefly, Five wonders how Ben saw him in the dark to begin with. Perhaps ghosts have better eyesight that normal people. He shall have to ask later.

Cautious fingers nudge against Five’s exposed arm, their heat feeling like coals from hellfire itself and making Five flinch away.

“Ok, alright.” Klaus backs off, shifting himself slightly further away for good measure. “I won’t touch you.”

He makes it sound like Five is some touch-sensitive puppy, shying away from caring hands to curl behind a dumpster in a grim alleyway. 

Five is not, he is anything but. 

In simple terms, casual touches are not in his nature. Five has never been one for the hugs and exaggerated signs of affection that Klaus and the others are so keen on expressing, even back in early childhood. Just ask Dolores, she could vouch more than anyone that Five does not interact ant more than he has to, and they were together for years.

“How’s the breathing, buddy?”

“Don’t call me that.” Five spits, venom lacing his words to mask the chattering of his teeth. 

“Fair enough.” Klaus shrugs, nonplussed by the harshness. “But my question still stands.”

“How do you _think_ it is?” The question does not fully make sense, Five realises as it leaves his mouth, but clearly Klaus gets the gist, because he hums thoughtfully.

“Well, considering it’s colder than a polar bear’s arse in here, I’d say a bit too shivery to be healthy.” He muses, the joke making neither of them laugh. “But it sounds better than before.”

“Good. Great. Thank you for that brilliant insight.” Shaking his head, Five stares intently at the shelves and the packet sausages that gleam in the light. “If you’re cold, you can leave.”

He just needs to clear his head and move on. Being taken by surprise like that was a shock to the system, but not Five can prepare for that as well. Heat, earthquake, pen, map, smell. 

A nice little festering list.

Klaus’ expression is odd, one Five cannot place, and his eyes watch the white breath that leaves Five’s nose as he breathes.

“Are you not, then?” He asks. “Cold, that is.”

Five is, but he is savouring it, treating it like something to be indulged in slowly, as to make the most out of ever second.

“I’m fine.” He says. His cheeks sting, and he cannot feel the tips of his fingers and toes.

“Sure you are.”

“Seriously Klaus, I’m fine in here. Just leave me alone, and I’ll catch up with you later.”

Squeezing his lips together, Klaus is the picture of unconvinced. “If I leave you to _catch up with us later_ , you’ll be an icicle. It’s already been half an hour, and call me insane, but I get a sneaky suspicion that you’ve been in here this entire time.”

“And?” Five challenges.

“And,” Reaching forward, Klaus grabs onto one of Five’s hands before he can protest, bringing it up to hold within his own. “You’re freezing. Actual, this-is-how-you-get-sick freezing. You can’t stay in here much longer, Five, you’re going to get ill.” 

Frowning, Klaus shuffles to lean in closer, sharp gaze running over Five’s face. His expression softens, and his free hand comes up to cup Five’s cheeks, his thumb smudging away wet patches Five was not aware of on his numb skin.

Five does not move under the touch, merely watching Klaus out of the corner of his eye.

“Hey, what’s all this?” His brother’s voice is silky soft, that frustrating empathetic tone he has always possessed no matter how many drugs he was on, or how many times Dad locked him away. “What are these for, short stack?”

Another nickname, but Five lets it slide.

Glancing away but not moving his face, Five grits his teeth, catching the inside of his cheek. He is not sure he can properly feel it.

“Why don’t we head out, go back to the room?” Klaus suggests. “It could be just you and me, if you want. We can lock the others out. They’ll make a hell of a racket, but we can ignore that.”

“Please don’t make me leave.” Five whispers before he can catch himself, his breath puffing in the air. His core feels shivery, pathetic, washed and rinsed and wrung out like an old battered handkerchief after too many spins in the machine.

Klaus prompts. “Why?”

Working his jaw, words stick themselves on the roof of Five’s mouth, clinging there like chewy caramel. Klaus watches him struggle, and perhaps it is a testament to how far he has come that Klaus is not spouting random things at Five to see what sticks in the hope of a vague sense of connectivity. 

His brother is quiet, patient, a lot more like the little boy they all used to know before he was dubbed _The Séance_.

“It’s too hot.” Five croaks, his voice barely audible. 

“Too hot?”

Silently, he nods, hating the way his weakness hangs between them, strung up in the air like a butcher’s carcass behind a glass window, the chest cavity cracked open for all to see. It makes his insides squirm, and he shuffles, bringing his face out of the soothing hand to hold himself stiffly away from Klaus.

In his head, The Handler laughs at him. 

Dolores encourages.

“I’m not…” Five starts and the stops, swallowing. “I can’t…” He makes a small gesture with his hand, waving it between him and Klaus while keeping his gaze firmly on his lap. 

In reply, Klaus makes an agreeable humming noise, and he moves up to sit directly in front of Five, their knees touching.

“That’s fine, you don’t have to.” He says, and at Five’s frowned look he grins and shrugs. “Something someone at rehab always used to say. Not to force it. Had it on posters and everything.”

“Oh.”

Five imagines his siblings will have very different reactions. There is no way they are not going to crowd Five as soon as they see him, asking prodding questions and demanding full answers, complete with references and footnotes. Five’s drinking of several nights ago will undoubtedly be brought to attention, as will his vomiting session after reading the map.

He jumps when he suddenly realises Klaus is vigorously rubbing at his arms.

As he tries to bat the hands away, Klaus huffs. “Look, I get you don’t want to leave here Five, but you’re seriously starting to freeze. If you were in any other place, I’d be a-ok to leave you until you were ready, but I think you’re starting to turn blue now, all joking aside.”

“Oh.” Five says again, blinking pathetically at him and not moving.

Licking his lip, Klaus’ eyes watches him, flicking over Five’s mouth and then down to his hands. Giving Five’s arms one last squeeze, Klaus gently takes one of Five’s hands, looping his adult fingers around the smaller palm and carefully tugging.

“C’mon, we can go hide in a laundry cupboard or something. Those will be cooler anyway.” He tugs a bit more, enough to force Five’s body forward. “I’ll even get Ben to check that everything’s clear of any runaway Hargreeves before we go anywhere.” 

Reaching across, Klaus takes the underside of Five’s elbow, and with a bit of a huff he drags Five upright, grabbing onto him as Five’s legs immediately buckle.

Brain matter swirls across Five’s vision, dizzy and disorientating, and Five is ashamed to admit he makes a small yelping noise in the back of his throat as the world tips sideways. He ends up face first in Klaus’ chest, much warmer limbs holding him steady as Five tries to catch his bearings.

He should be protesting this, arguing and hissing and biting, demanding to be left alone and forgotten in the back of the freezer. Five should not want to go, because to go is to give in, to admit things are wrong. To go means he will have to answer questions and provide examples of his time in the apocalypse, the whys to the whats. 

Looping an arm securely around his shoulders, Klaus carefully starts to guide him towards the cracked open doorway, his fingers tight and stable over Five’s shivering shoulders.

“Come on.” Klaus says, ignoring the way Five silently latches on to the material of Klaus’ shirt. “Let’s get you sorted.”

Five cannot feel his cheeks, so he does not know if he is crying or not, but he bites his lip, and nods once.

“Ok.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This very easily could have dragged on much longer, could have had so many more chapters, but I only have so much time in the day, and this was originally only meant to have a chapter or two, so I've decided to leave it a bit open ended, with a glimmer of hope for our stubborn boy.
> 
> Thank you everyone for reading xx
> 
> [Tumblr](https://ancientstone.tumblr.com/)


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